The present invention relates to a battery protection circuit having protection functions that turn off the current path when an abnormal condition occurs in a battery pack, in particular, but not by way of limitation, of a plurality of Lithium Sulfur (LiS) batteries connected in series.
Lithium Sulfur (LiS) rechargeable batteries provide users with high-energy and light-weight solutions. For example, LiS batteries developed by Sion Power™ Corporation, Tucson Ariz., are reported to be capable of delivering a specific energy of 400 Wh/kg and an energy density of 425 Wh/liter. The specific energy of the LiS battery exceeds that of state-of-the-art Lithium Ion (Li Ion) chemistry by a factor of greater than two, while the energy density stands at an equivalent level. That is, a LiS battery provides the same runtime for a portable computer in less than half the weight, or twice the runtime in the same weight while having a volume comparable to a Lithium Ion battery. Another reported advantage of LiS batteries is their ability to work well in very cold weather. Typical applications include unmanned aerial vehicles, military communication systems, rugged notebook computers, tablet personal computers, and portable medical devices.
Battery packs containing multiple battery cells are used to power up various pieces of equipment. To assure that each battery in the pack operates safely and gives the expected performance, the batteries can be protected from abnormal conditions such as over-charge or over-discharge conditions. Furthermore, most batteries generate heat as they charge; for some type of batteries, excessive charge can pose a potential fire risk. Conventional heat management involves heat sinking by using, for example, circuit boards with large copper areas, thereby increasing the cost.
Since a LiS battery is capable of providing the same runtime in less than half the weight as compared to a Lithium Ion battery, it is possible to expand the application range to high voltage situations by stacking up more LiS batteries than Li Ion batteries without increasing the total weight for existing equipment. In conventional over-charge/over-discharge protection schemes for such multi-cell, high-voltage packs, two power MOSFETs are implemented in the high-side path of the battery pack, together with a control circuit to drive each of the gates. The rechargeable battery pack is configured such that it can source energy to a load or can be recharged by a charger source. One of the MOSFETs is turned off to cut off the current path when over-charge is detected during the charging phase with a charger; and the other MOSFET is turned off to cut off the current path when over-discharge is detected during the discharging phase with a load. There are two types of such high-side switches: two P-channel MOSFETs connected back-to-back and two N-channel MOSFETs connected back-to-back with an additional charge pump circuit.
The N-channel MOSFET uses electrons as the majority carriers, which have higher mobility than holes, the majority carriers in the P-channel MOSFET. This means that, with the same physical dimensions, the N-channel MOSFET has higher transconductance than the P-channel MOSFET, which translates to lower drain-source resistance during the ON state, or RDSON. Typically, the RDSON of the N-channel MOSFET is two to three times lower than that of a similar-sized P-channel MOSFET, hence a higher drain current ID by a similar factor. This also means that, for the same RDSON and ID, the N-channel MOSFET typically requires less silicon, and therefore is less expensive than the P-channel MOSFET. One fundamental property of the N-channel MOSFET is that for the switch to operate in the linear region while it is on, the gate voltage VG needs to be higher than the drain voltage VD by a value of the threshold voltage VT. The VD is normally connected to the high-side input voltage, which is the highest voltage seen by the switch. Therefore, the VG has to be either “level shifted up” from an existing voltage or “biased up” by a DC offset, both requiring additional circuitry. If the gate voltage is level-shifted up, typically a charge pump is needed. The charge pump requires an internal oscillator, and at least one “flying” capacitor on the chip to produce the gate voltage. This adds design complexity and silicon, which offsets the silicon (and cost) reduction gained by the N-channel MOSFET's lower RDSON property.
In the appended figures, similar components and/or features may have the same reference label. Further, various components of the same type may be distinguished by following the reference label by a dash and a second label that distinguishes among the similar components. If only the first reference label is used in the specification, the description is applicable to any one of the similar components having the same first reference label irrespective of the second reference label.